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Let me introduce myself

Let me introduce myself. My name is Dmitry Marusin, I’m a system architect and technical director of the Triumph LLC. Since 14.09.2017 due to the departure of Yuri Kovelenov I took over as the Head of the Blend4Web team.

A few words about myself. I’m 39, 20+ of which I devoted to software development and IT in general. I’ve been working in our company for over 11 years. I'm fond of computer graphics, I remember when VGA-monitors were a luxury (such warm memories), I’ve monitored all the landmark events in 3D graphics since the times of the first 3D accelerators (hello Riva TNT and Voodoo Graphics). I’m familiar with quite a few 3D engines and 3D modeling packages, and pay great attention to everything related to WebGL, VR and AR. I’m proficient in web technologies, corporate software development, programming in Python, C#, C++, JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, Erlang, Node.js. I love movies, music, books and bicycles.

I've been watching the development of Blend4Web since its inception, felt challenged by obstacles and rejoiced at breakthroughs. I remember how we saw the benefits of WebGL, possibilities it provides, came up with idea of development of our own WebGL engine that is tightly integrated with Blender. I remember when Yuri came to our company, a flash programmer and young specialist at that time.

Not long ago Yuri has decided to leave us, to find his own way. Unfortunately, from time to time every one of us is faced with a situation when you need to prove yourself and grow or go. We respect Yuri’s choice and wish him success and good luck in his endeavors. Our company is grateful to Yuri for his diligence and enthusiasm.However it has long been overdue for Blend4web to take bolder steps forward. After all, our goal is to make Blend4Web one of the standards for demonstrating interactive 3D experiences on the Internet. Therefore our project has to be lead by a manager who is proficient at marketing, has an excellent technical background and is capable of developing precise business plans.

Our team relentlessly continue the engine development – we’re adding physically correct rendering and support for PBR materials, giving the ability to use procedural geometry in scenes, planning to greatly enhance the logic editor, preparing for the launch of the next version of Blender, etc.

What is more, we are putting together a new product - Blend4Web for configurators, which will make creation of the product presentations, CPQ experiences and similar applications much easier. Furthermore, we’re developing the sales department, launching affiliate program, certification program for studios, our own exchange to connect businesses with studios and freelancers, a cloud platform for hosting 3D scenes & applications, working on integration with social networks, planning to heavily redesign our website and launch marketplace for selling Blend4Web assets.

We will continue to highly value our community, appreciate and respect loyal customers, gladly welcome new ones, and be open to any offers of cooperation.

I’d like to bring to your attention that Triumph LLC is the owner of the Blend4Web software and Blend4Web trademark. Emails stated in Yuri’s last post are solely his personal mailboxes and as of September 14th have nothing to do neither with Triumph LLC nor the Blend4Web brand.

The official e-mail addresses and phone contacts are as always listed on our website at www.blend4web.com

First of all, we dont't plan to phase out game-centric functions. Quite contrary, we plan to implement several things with regard to game creation:

1) We are going to heavily enhance thing you can do with node-based logic. For example, in the upcoming release we'll introduce support for the functions so you can reduce the complexity of the visual scripts. More features are on the way, so stay tuned.

2) We are going to introduce networking subsystem that will allow real-time communications between browser and web server or peer-to-peer commnucation between users. This subsystem will function as auxillary module much like physics engine already does and won't affect the size of the engine unless application really needs networking functionality.

I'm a big fan of the way you have implemented the visual scripting and heavy enhancements to node-based logic sounds very helpful.

1)I've heard rumors that there might be a merge of Eevee with BGE and UPBGE in blender 2.8. I think it would be a really great strategy to try and capture the blender game engine folks. Do you ever see a possibility of being able to export BGE logics to B4W logics? I've seen some very amazing things done with BGE, it's possibly the most powerful game creation tool around.. It's unfortunate that Blender doesn't export easily to anything and include BGE.

It's too bad, a little late for it now but a Haloween B4W sanctioned mini game making competition which allowed both B4W and BGE games to be submitted seems like a really good way to drum up some support in that direction.

1a) In general, are there any plans for community projects of that nature in the future?

2) So, I can already communicate from logic nodes and RestFul API to web server with send request node GET and POST. Sending game data via open javascript in the browser would be easily exploited, what are you thinking in terms of real time communications?

We believe that both visual scripting and traditional coding can co-exist. Different kinds of users have different requirements. JavaScript could be too difficult for a, let’s say, a 3D modeler but he/she could manage to employ visual scripting to implement desired interactivity.

Of course, visual scripting will never replace regular JavaScript. Moreover, it is not intended to do so. In order to reach the highest possible results one needs to learn coding, but in many cases visual scripts could do the job pretty well.

We have plans to organize thematic competitions like the Halloween competition you’ve mentioned but no exact dates at the moment. It would be interesting to know how the same goal could be achieved using different engines and not just by Blend4Web and BGE..

Real-time communications of the network subsystem will allow bi-directional information flow and will be based on WebSockets and/or WebRTC. Sure one can implement it using JavaScript and libraries like socket.io, but the network subsystem will provide native support like this to visual scripts, provide objects state synchronization and other facilities. I can’t say more right now as it’s still too early.

Reply to post of user Dmitry MarusinWe believe that both visual scripting and traditional coding can co-exist. Different kinds of users have different requirements. JavaScript could be too difficult for a, let’s say, a 3D modeler but he/she could manage to employ visual scripting to implement desired interactivity.

Totally agree with Dmitry, b4w + javascript would be only for programmers, with logical nodes is for everyone. It is very similar to BGE, with logic bricks you can make a game with limitations, with python the possibilities are endless.